EXHIBITIONS | Human / Nature

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Human / Nature

Sculpture | Mixed media | Trompe l’oeil

May 21 - July 11 2026

Receptions:

Opening reception: June 5 | 5-8pm
Artist Talks: June 5 | 6:30pm
Closing reception: July 3 | 5-8pm
Artist Talks: July 3 | 6:30pm

Gravers Lane Gallery welcomes the remarkable work of Painter / Sculptor Ron Isaacs. Renowned Kentucky-based artist and teacher with a career spanning over 50 years, Isaacs’s work has been exhibited in major galleries in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York, with work residing in multiple private and corporate collections. Currently, the largest public collection is housed in the Racine Museum of Art in Wisconsin.

By using objects such as garments, tools, and organic materials, Isaacs explores the narrative of objects and their relation to mortality, memory, and the passage of time. Through the process of creating an installation with objects in a still-life setting, Isaacs experiments with birch, plywood, and acrylic paint to construct his work.

As a trained painter, Isaacs employs techniques similar to those of the old masters, such as Caravaggio, to create a composition reminiscent of traditional two-dimensional work. By balancing form, texture, and light, Isaacs’ work explores the elements of memory, the passage of time, and how objects can evoke memory.

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ArtsXhibit | Ron Isaacs “Human / Nature” at Gravers Lane Gallery

Ron Isaacs

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Ron Isaacs was born in Cincinnati, seven weeks before Pearl Harbor, an only child. He never wanted to be anything but an artist. His parents were from rural Jackson County in Eastern Kentucky, and they moved back there when he was twelve to farm, build a house, and teach. After high school with no art instruction available, he majored in art at Berea College in Kentucky, won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, and received an MFA in painting from Indiana University. He retired from thirty-six years of teaching painting and drawing at the college level and is currently Professor Emeritus, Eastern Kentucky University. He has exhibited nationally for over a half-century, and is represented in numerous museum, institutional, business, and private collections. He now lives in Lexington, Kentucky in a town house with his supportive art educator wife Judy, and commutes to work upstairs to his workshop and studio. In reasonably good health and having never heard of a retired artist, he can hardly wait to see what he makes next.

ARTIST STATEMENT

“The harder I look at a thing, the more mysterious it becomes.” – Claes Oldenburg
My works stand exactly halfway between painting and sculpture. They take the form of relief constructions fabricated completely of Finnish and Baltic birch plywood, painted in acrylics. I use trompe l’oeil (‘fool the eye’) devices to provide the visual authority of direct observation, and I enjoy the fusion and confusion of real and illusory forms that results. A strong image and a well-designed composition are my first goals, and to make what will become a truly interesting object which rewards scrutiny and thought. Paradoxical interruptions and metamorphoses often occur. Clothing, found objects, and plant materials are my vocabulary of subject matter: The depicted vintage garments bear their own stories, and are clearly anthropomorphic stand-ins for the human figure. There are occasional found objects wearing some patina of time. Leaves and sticks form partnerships with the clothing and other subjects, often suggesting metaphors for the nature that we are part of and apart from, for memory and mortality and the passage of time, and for psychological states. I intend to make images which are as open in content and as evocative as I can devise. Creating and exploring mysteries and performing feats of magic have always been part of art’s job description. In life I will stand with science every time, but my work still likes to go out and play with the magic and the mystery.